


Knowing

by galacticproportions



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Ethics, Finntrospection, Grief, M/M, Psychological Manipulation, Stormtrooper Culture, fumbling in the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 01:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12158712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: FN-2187 can't stop thinking.





	1. The Boyfriends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchis/gifts).



> I haven't read _Before the Awakening_ , and I wanted to think about how FN-2187 might become the person we meet in _The Force Awakens_ \--the person who isn't willing to shoot helpless strangers, the person who both fears and trusts, the person who finds it necessary and desirable to do the right thing. 
> 
> This is for orchis, who got me started writing it, and for everyone who has started to realize that what they've been told about themselves and their world isn't true, and tried to sort out what they've been told, what they see around them, and what they feel to figure out what they should do.

_ Contraband 06 2230, _ FN-2246’s fingers flicked at holster level as she and her counterpart passed FN-2187 in the corridor. He translated it in his head: 06 barrack, 2230 hours, and contraband could be anything--food, music. Once it was a scrap of fabric so soft that nine or ten of them crouched around it like it was a fire in a survival training sim, passing it from hand to hand. 

2187 went through the motions of the rest of the day: the blaster range, an invasion and occupation training sim (not one of his favorites), his thirty-day physical and contraceptive shot, his ration allotment. Slip caught up with him in the corridor that led to 06 barrack and bumped him shoulder to shoulder. Armor on armor always rang the same; it didn’t really sound different just because it was the two of them.

Visiting barracks other than your own was permitted between 2200 and 2400, though if you went to the same place too often you could catch a case. 2187 and Slip piled in, unlatched their helmets and settled on the floor between Bigfoot, FN-2246 and a trooper from the GA series that 2187 didn’t know. Sixes, the best smuggler in their unit, looked around the rough circle, reached into her bunk and pulled out a hand-sized holo playback. She held up a still-gloved finger to hush the excited noises and thumbed the playback on.

“Why is she talking to him like that,” Slip murmured a few minutes in, his breath tickling FN-2187’s ear. And later, “Why did they run away?” And later still, “Who’s that person, why is she telling her it’ll be okay?” 2817 whispered answers back, or said softly, “Just watch,” but not impatiently, and enjoyed the feeling of Slip next to him, even through armor. This was just part of who Slip was, even though if 2187 knew his fellow troopers, Slip was getting an elbow from the other side in the place where the armor gapped at his waist.

The older woman in the projection, about the age you would expect a general to be, said to the younger one, “If your boyfriend gives us any trouble I’m spacing him without a second thought.” This time Slip wasn’t the only one confused. A whisper went around the room: “What was that word she said?”

A little later, when the younger woman and the young man--both people looking about as old as the troopers were, Year 19 of Service--were kissing, a hiss of satisfied sighs went up around the circle. The holo ended; the swelling music played. Sixes looked around the circle. “2246 is my boyfriend!” she said triumphantly, and they all giggled, and 2246 got up from where she was curled to kiss Sixes in the extravagant way that the people in the holo had kissed.

The handsign for  _ boyfriend  _ appeared about three days later--2187 saw it from Boots, and Sixes said she saw it from one of the cadets, of all things. That in turn was two days before Sixes was called for reconditioning, and after that she and 2246 passed each other in the corridors without their shoulders touching.

He and Slip were more careful for a while after that. Careful when they spoke in public, careful about walking together, and in 2817’s case even careful to use the computer banks to make a recreation appointment. The guy he met there was someone he’d never seen before with his helmet off, handsome enough to 2187’s eye, but with a thin smile and impatient hands.

After he got off, 2187 was glad to get into the sonics and back to tactical training, ration allotment, 04 Barrack where Slip was waiting for him, even though it would probably be safer to hold off for another night.

It had started simply, about a year ago. They’d been sitting side by side on Slip’s bunk, taking their armor and boots off for the night. All around them troopers were doing the same, singly or in pairs like them, complaining about their captains or bragging about a new kill score in a sim or reassuring each other about an upcoming deployment. Almost none of them had seen actual combat, then.  2187 looked up and saw that Slip, gloveless now, was tracing the line of his own lips with one fingertip. 2187 felt warm all over, hot in his chest and belly. Slip was looking at him; Slip was saying, “Can I do this to you?”

That was how all the questions went, that was how they learned together. 2187 would touch his own cock where Slip could see him, and ask. Slip would put a hand on the back of his own neck, and ask. The feeling 2187 got each time--not just at the touch, but at the question--was completely different than the one he got at the door of a recreation chamber. Starting around Year Eight of Service, troopers got basic anatomic and sexual education, which emphasized efficiency and its relationship to all-round performance, the need of many adults for regular sexual activity and the detrimental effects of repeated encounters with one partner. When your pubes showed up in your thirty-day physical, they started you on contraceptive shots, and if you wanted--some people, 2187 knew, never did--you typed your interest in a partner and your gender preferences, if any, into the databanks. Discreet, and discrete: it was rare for the computers to match you up with the same person twice. Never using them didn’t seem to cause any problems, but using them too much could catch you a case or even reconditioning.

But the thing that really got you reconditioned was the thing he and Slip were doing, and now they had a name for it. 

“Boyfriend,” he breathed into Slip’s neck as they crowded into one bunk. They wouldn’t be able to stay the night there, but the lights were out and they could take a few minutes; they were usually careful to stay quiet, but he wanted to say it. “You’re my boyfriend.”

Slip got a hand under the edge of 2187’s shirt, blaster and maintenance calluses dragging across skin. They slept in their undersuits, but there were ways around that. There were ways around most of the little things. “Are you my boyfriend too?”

2187 hesitated. Was he? The boyfriend in the holo hadn’t called the other person anything in particular, except her name, like she was an officer. But they’d both behaved the same toward each other, sort of eager and gentle at the same time. “Yes,” he said firmly, and Slip made the little sound that 2187 could never hear enough of, a kind of voiced sigh of contentment that let him sink a little under 2187’s weight.

He shifted until they could rub against each other and pressed his mouth to Slip’s to help them both stay quiet. All around them were the small movements of the barrack at night, a few more pairs doing more or less what they were doing, shifts of fabric against plasteel, snores, farts, someone humming someone else back down from a nightmare. When 2187 opened his eyes for a moment, the red glow of the emergency light was just enough to outline Slip’s head against the pillow, but most of what he knew about Slip’s body--the shape of his profile and his dick, the grid of his stomach muscles, the line of his shoulders--he knew through touch, just like this, in the dark.

The First Order cared a lot about how things looked, and the words people said. Uniforms, parade rest, propaganda speeches. 2187 did his best to live up to this, to keep his armor polished, to help maintain order in his unit, to manage crowds and track down insurgents and ensure the smooth running of their ships, to do his captain proud. But the counterpoint to all of that was here, without brightness, without armor, almost without words, in the places where he and Slip were pressed together. Caught and ignited between their bodies, running in his veins as he went off into Slip’s hand. In the morning he’d have to run the undersuit through the sonics and if anyone saw him, lie and say he shot in his sleep.

Over the next tenday, Captain Phasma upped the number of crowd control and urban tactical sims, so FN-2187 wasn’t surprised when the new orders came down and they filed onto a transport bound for Manaan. The role of any given mission in the Order’s overall strategy was need-to-know, but 2187 added the coordinates of Manaan to the sector map in his head and the conversation between lieutenants he’d overheard while running an errand for the captain. He made a guess that Manaan was important because it was resource-rich rather than because of its location, probably in either ores or gases that would go toward the new planet-sized weapon that he’d heard an engineer mention before another engineer shushed her.

He didn’t know why he did this, exactly, fitting things together, but he found it satisfying in the same way that historical briefings were. He never talked to anyone about it, or did anything with the information--what would he do? But it made him feel good to  _ know,  _ to hold the layouts of the ships they used in his mind, to hear where other units had been and what orders they’d followed. To put the picture together.

On the way they’re told that they’re there to oversee the formal surrender of the planetary government to the First Order, and to remain on the planet to maintain the smoothness of the transition. “We’ve had reports of dissenters and malcontents,” the captain says. “We need to prepare for aggression.”

This would be his--third, second or third?--onplanet deployment, so he found his land legs quickly and even got a hand under Slip’s elbow to prevent him from living up to his name. They formed their cordon, blasters charged and ready, around the courtyard where the exchange of power was taking place, between a general that 2187 had never seen before and a planetary official in stiff high-waisted trousers, their scalp shaved and dusted with gold. Something about their very formality raised a feeling in him that he didn’t know the name for. The two of them spoke the last words of the oath of allegiance, the anthem--“Together, in unity, we rise to greatness”--and 2187 saw, or heard, or felt, a kind of surge or heave spread through the crowd, like--the image came to him and wouldn’t leave--the feeling that ripples through your body before you vomit.

The crowd heaved again and pushed a Manaani toward him, hard-eyed and--he registered quickly--armed. He took the sidearm away from them and they sank down, probably in pain from the hold he’s using. They strained to get loose from him, to get their hand to their other hip--something else, a backup weapon--and he thought,  _ Don’t. Don’t make me hurt you worse.  _ 2149 had her blaster trained on someone who started a lunge, to help the attacker or to hurt 2187--both, it was both, it was the same--and Slip was stepping in to fill the gap her aim made.

He thought,  _ Please, just back down.  _ Thought,  _ You don’t have to do this,  _ not sure who he was saying it to.

2149 swung her blaster sideways, clubbing the person she was facing with the butt. The person in 2187’s grip spat on his boots, purple-tinged like they’d  been chewing something, and went limp. He let them drop. They looked up at him with hatred, rose to their feet, stumbled backward into the crowd, which swallowed them back down.


	2. Discipline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An offence against unity is bad.

The captain snapped out the order sending four of them to follow the insurgent through the steep streets of the city, all uphill from the courtyard where the planet handed itself entire over to the Order. The stormtroopers took the hills easily, not even winded, but they weren’t home and the insurgent was. The city took them in. 2187 and the others gave up as dark was falling, and he had to stir the rest of them up a little to get them back to the inn where they were quartered. 

He wasn’t nervous, exactly. More resigned. He wasn’t sure how they’d handle punishment detail onplanet as oppposed to on a station or ship, but no doubt there was something humiliating or exhausting they could have him do, something gross they could task him with making invisible. There was some kind of alert panel installed next to the door; he pressed it, and the door opened. 

Captain Phasma was in armor; he’d never seen her out of it. The chair the inn provided was soft, but she sat in it at attention. “FN-2187,” she said, and he said, “Sir.” 

“I need an explanation of why you let that insurgent go, trooper.”

This, he’d expected; this, he’d planned for. “I didn’t want the situation to escalate, sir. The crowd wasn’t with us. If I’d taken them into custody, or hurt them in a way people could see, I thought the rest of them might--”

“FN-2187, the crowd is never with us. Your orders were to maintain order, and that’s what I expect from my unit. You had an opportunity to show what the First Order will and will not tolerate, and your failure could have repercussions for our presence on this planet and for our unity.”

That was bad. An offence against unity was bad. He felt shame; he stood straighter. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll accept discipline.”

“I’d expect nothing less from you, 2187. When we return to the space station tomorrow, you’ll report for reconditioning.”

A deep, sick tremor shook him, something so deeply buried that it didn’t reach his posture, barely grazed his mind, like something moving at ankle depth in the garbage level, something he didn’t want to know about. “Yes, sir.” 

“Dismissed, trooper.”

“Yes, sir,” he said again. He turned, left, followed his memory back down the maze of hallways and out to the barn where the troopers were sleeping. He knew Slip before he saw his number up in the helmet display, knew him by the small, probably involuntary motion he made when he saw 2187 come into the dimly-lit, broadly shadowed building.

There was straw on the floor; unsanitary. Onplanet they were expected to sleep in their armor, and 2187 was glad of the protection, but he wished he could be close to Slip tonight. He settled down beside him and took his helmet off--even officers didn’t expect you to sleep in those. 

Slip mirrored his motions. His pupils were huge, gathering what was left of the light, and his hair was matted where the helmet had rested. “What’d the captain say?”

“Reconditioning tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Slip said, “well, that’s okay, right? You’ll do a better job.”

2187 didn’t say anything. He knew he was supposed to answer in the affirmative; an affirmative was on the tip of his tongue. But the tip of his tongue was somehow in communication with the pit of his stomach, which was filled with dread, and he didn’t know why.

He seized Slip’s hand, pushed the glove up to bare his wrist, laid three fingers there. “I’m your boyfriend,” he said fiercely, pressing down to seal the swear. Snap took his own glove off and did the same, the pads of his fingers damp against 2187’s skin.

They kissed for a while, disgusting straw poking into the back of 2187’s neck, Slip’s breath hot and sweet; they kissed till their lips dried out and went to sleep half-hard under their armor. 2187 woke up gasping, every muscle strained tight like he’d been fighting in his sleep. 

Dread sat in him as they fell in and boarded and stood in their ranks, swaying with the heavy thrum of the transport; dread’s footsteps rang behind his on the way down to Labs. The tech checked his designation on her datapad and motioned him to a seat. He wondered who else was in there, losing--losing-- 

He wondered why he was so afraid. 

He checked to see if the tech was watching him, but her eyes were intent on her datapad, or pretending to be. Sometimes he could tell that troopers made other personnel uncomfortable, though he wasn’t sure why. The covered faces, maybe; real people didn’t do that. When he was sure she wasn’t looking, he peeled his glove off and laid his fingertips against his own wrist and thought Slip as hard as he could. He just managed to get the glove back on before she called out, “FN-2187,” and beckoned him toward the inner door. 

The white chair with its wrist and ankle restraints, the glowing screen, the needle in his neck, were all familiar. “Your designation, trooper,” someone was saying.

“FN-2187.” You didn’t say “sir” to a tech.

“Your barracks number?”

“04.”

“You’re clear to go back there.” He didn’t move. He was comfortable, his body meaningless. The tech sighed, a soft gust above him. “They always get like this. Dismissed, trooper.” 

2187’s spine and limbs had him upright and walking, up out of labs and into the lift, finger on the 04 button. He felt automatic, settled, content. Saluted when General Varga entered the lift; exited when the number for his level lit up; walked down to barracks like his armor was carrying him along. 

After reconditioning troopers had permission to sit out the remainder of their shift, he knew that, just as he knew that his next shift would be in physical training and the following one would be a sleep cycle and the following would be in sanitation, just as he knew that Phasma was his captain and Slip was his--

Slip was his--

2187 took his helmet off and lay back in his bunk and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, hard, even though it wasn’t regulation sleep posture. Glanced at the chrono display on the wall: two more hours before shift change. He tried to slow and discipline his breath out of its sudden raggedness, with some success. Glanced at the chrono again: only a few minutes on. Glanced at it again.

It was better when he was in the training rooms, muscles taking over with sure knowledge, practicing come-along holds and immobilization holds, taking turns being the insurgent. But this time there was a difference, an unease, an extra bite of violence when he took his turn fighting back against FN-2006 with all his strength and ended up cursing on the floor, his arm numb to the elbow. Stormtroopers don’t feel pain, said a voice at the back of his mind that almost sounded like his own thoughts. 

Back in barracks, FN-2003 paused facing him, hands at his helmet fastenings, for the space of three breaths--2187 counted. Then the helmet was off, and Slip was looking at him, mouth hanging a little open, the pink of his lower lip damp.

2187 took his own helmet off. “Slip,” he said hoarsely.

“Yeah, what? Are you still out of it?”

“A little. I think.” 

“You should lie down,” Slip said, the way he said everything that wasn’t a question, like there was only one obvious answer. FN-2187 took off his armor, lay in his bunk, his motions echoing the motions of everyone around him. When the lights dipped down to dim red illumination, Slip got in with him, and 2187 put an arm around him, feeling awkward and forced but also right. “You were like this last time too,” Slip said. “Why do you get like this? I never do.”

“Last time?”

“Last reconditioning.” Slip snuggled closer, fit the bulb of his head into the hollow of 2187’s neck and shoulder, and 2187 had to force himself to keep still and not push him away. The feeling fought with the need to pull him closer. Which was right, which was true? He wanted to lie together, he did, but he couldn’t settle, and Slip seemed to pick up on it: after another few breaths he rolled away and went to his own bunk, leaving 2187’s side cold. 

The next few cycles, the reconditioning seemed to sink in and subside: morning parade, and his heart swelled with the anthem. Rations and sanitation and maintenance and a series of simulations, wilderness survival and more crowd control. Slip’s mouth on his in the dark, their hips angled into each other. More contraband, this time an audio playback of tinny, scratchy music with complex interweaving beats and tremulous overtones: they crouched around it while it played through seven times, and somebody whispered that it might’ve been made by a nonhuman sentient, which gave them all a dirty thrill. And the formal announcement of a treaty with a key Inner Rim system, at which they all cheered in unison till they were hoarse. 

2187 couldn’t help wondering about the terms of the treaty. It wasn’t a system he’d ever heard of, and likely he’d never see it, but he wanted to know: what were they getting, and what were they giving up? Who made the decision--did they have officers? A Supreme Leader? The thoughts kept intruding even through combat practice, even into blaster drills, even when he and Slip ducked into a supply closet and he got on his knees until Slip went off in his mouth, the back of his head banging against the shelves so that they almost got caught. This is stupid, 2187 thought, but wasn’t entirely sure which This he meant.


	3. Recreation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why was he sad? And angry? Angry at who? And why did his mind want to ask questions about _doors?_

A few cycles later, 2187 figured he’d better sign up for another rec session to divert attention. He was back in the rhythm of obedience and small deceptions, saluting officers impeccably while making faces inside the helmet and earning a quiet, “Well done, 2187,” after a particularly tricky and grueling simulation. This was just one more thing that stormtroopers were supposed to do, and he was a stormtrooper.

At the terminal he typed in his designation and checked the box for all genders, waited for the time and location to pop up on the screen, and fixed them in his mind. Two cycles later (blaster drills and maintenance) he went to the recreation cubicles, undressed and left his armor and undersuit and helmet in the niche, and sat on one of the cool plasteel benches to wait.

The door opened--smoothly, near-silently, like all doors on First Order ships. (Why was he thinking that--where would he have seen another kind of door? Why did his mind want to ask questions about  _ doors? _ ) The person who came in had thick dark hair, dull skin a few shades paler than his, breasts, and a distant, resigned expression--all of these registered first, and then those features resolved into 2246.

They’d seen each other with their helmets off before, but never like this. “Hi,” he said. “What would you--” and stopped when the tears started seeping down her face, silently, the way all troopers cried. “What is it--” he felt the urge to call her by a squadname, something gentler than a number, but she didn’t have one. “What is it?” he repeated. “Do you not want to? We don’t have to, it’s okay.” Someone said that to him once--a trooper whose number he didn’t remember and who was many cycles dead--the first time he went in for a rec session and was nervous. But this seemed like something more than that, deeper and more dire.

He’d actually never heard of anyone  _ not  _ trying to go off during a rec session, but he’d also never heard that it’s compulsory. His mind was alert, neither feeling the flood of satisfaction that came with doing something right or the flood of shame that came with doing something wrong. He was worried, because he liked 2246 and he didn’t want her to be sad; he was unsettled, because this had never happened before. There was no conditioning for this, no programming. Touching her seemed like a bad idea. Would asking more questions help? He waited, looking at a place on the wall just over her left shoulder, feeling worse and worse, but not in a conditioned way. In the new way, the way he’d felt back on--

Back on--

_ You don’t have to do this. _

“2187,” someone was saying, “are you--” Pale brown face, dark curly hair: 2246 is leaning over him, eyes still swollen from crying, an expression on her face that was--different from the one she came in with, was about all he could say. He’d slipped a little sideways, and it seemed the time had too--there were only about 10 minutes left of their session. “What happened?” she asked.

He sat up, with some effort. “What happened to you?”

Her face sagged again, and the tears welled. “Sixes,” she said. “She doesn’t know me, she doesn’t  _ see  _ me. I hate it. I want her to see me again.”

“They reconditioned her?” He thought maybe he’d already known that, but wasn’t sure.

“Yeah, and then I thought we might--you know, get to know each other again. I saved her half a ration bar, because she always used to get hungry between mess times, but then she didn’t want it, and she looked at me like she’d--she’d--like she’d never seen me before and like she didn’t even want to...”

Her body, well-trained like all their bodies, was still and at attention, but the tears and the tremor in her voice made it seem like she was collapsing from the inside. 2187 said, “Would it help if I held you?” and when she nodded, he went over to her bench and put his arms around her. Smelled her skin and sweat, a little different from his or from Slip’s even though they all used the same soap and deodorants and ate the same things and went the same places. He held her without any desire to touch her more than this, and her closeness was comforting even though she was--even though they were both sad.

Why was he sad? And more--angry? Angry at Sixes? That didn’t make sense--you couldn’t help reconditioning. Angry at who?

It occurred to 2187, very belatedly, that he’d heard rumors that the officers ran closed-circuit cameras in the rec rooms. It seemed like the kind of thing that troopers might make up, but it also did sort of seem like the thing that officers might do. Sometimes the contraband that troopers shared was holoporn, and on the days when 2187 believed the rumors, he figured that the officers were watching it for similar reasons: that mix of heat and unease, the extra feeling that these strangers didn’t know who was watching them do these things to each other.

It was only occurring to him now that they might be watching for other reasons. That they might have eyes in one of the very few places that troopers were alone together, without officers around, to see what they might do  _ besides  _ what they were supposed to do. Were they watching him and 2246 now? What could he expect, when he put his clothes and armor on again and stepped out into the corridor?

He couldn’t do anything about any of that right now. Maybe he could comfort 2246 a little more--he wished he knew more ways to do it. “Would anything, um,” he said. “Make you feel calm?”

“I don’t  _ want  _ to feel calm,” she said, pulling away from him and glaring. “I want to feel like this, if I can’t be her boyfriend then this is how I  _ should  _ feel. Even though I hate it.”

The words echoed in 2187’s head for the rest of the day, after they dressed again and went their ways, after he joined his unit for the evening mess and signed to Slip  _ not tonight _ . They kept him awake in his bunk and traveled with him around his tasks the next day. Then they faded in the calls-and-responses, the anthems, the orders, the simulations, the routine.

He never saw 2246 again. When he finally realized that he never would, her words came back, and this time they stayed.


	4. Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2187 hadn't realized that he could also know things about himself, about his own mind.

“Why am I 2003 and Juice is 2006?” Slip asked. “Where’s 2004 and 2005?”

2187 blinked, shutting out his helmet display for a flicker, a heartbeat. Then he saw it again, the diagram of the sanitation tunnels glowing green and orange between his eyes and the world. They were on the new base, the base that was also a weapon that was also a planet. Starkiller, they called it, but surely that was just the kind of name the First Order liked to give things, to make them sound big and powerful and frightening.

But they  _ were  _ big and powerful and--

“I don’t know,” 2187 said. It was true, there was no FN-2186 or FN-2188, that he knew of. He’d trained with FN-2193, hadn’t he, when they were cadets? Good at grappling and hand-to-hand but hopeless with a blaster. What happened to them?

He liked being able to answer Slip’s questions, liked the feeling it gave him of not just putting the pieces together but of sharing the resulting picture. (Liked, too, Slip’s gratitude, the way he said, “Oh, okay,” the way he sweetly fit what 2187 told him into his understanding.) But he couldn’t answer this one. The other troopers he asked--a select few, who he knew wouldn’t stool him out--just shrugged, and it wasn’t like he could ask an officer.

It wasn’t like he could ask an officer anything, really. That was one of the first things they learned as cadets. Questions were unacceptable, and he had more and more of them these days, even though he had a feeling it was supposed to go the other way.

Okay, then, he’d put it together the way he put together maps and strategies and histories. Two possibilities: designation numbers were randomized, or they were sequential. If they were randomized, then there didn’t need to be an FN-2004 or an FN-2005, and the fact that FN-2003 and FN-2006 were serving in the same unit was itself random. The Order didn’t seem to do much with randomization, though--they made a point of everything being designed, preplanned, foreseen.

If the designations were sequential, then either FN-2004 and FN-2005 were stationed elsewhere--which meant that the numbers didn’t have anything to do with how units kept together, even though the letters clearly did--or they were dead.

And so were FN-2188 through FN-2192, at least. Maybe 2193 too, for all he knew. And so were FN-2247 through FN-2265. And 2246, now.

A stormtrooper’s duty is to fight if the First Order needs them to fight, to kill if the First Order needs them to kill, and to die if the First Order needs them to die. 2187 had known this since he knew anything; he knew it  _ more  _ than he knew most things.

The knowing with which he knew it was so  _ different  _ than the way he knew, now, the names of hyperlane routes between the Atravis and the Subterrel sectors and the slowdown in the progress of the cupric circuitry, which taken together probably mean that one of those sectors was a source of copper and that there was something impeding the route. The second kind of knowing was harder, but more satisfying. The first kind was more comfortable, but it left his mind in armor, everything slipping off it and unable to get a good grip. And there were changes: less of one meant more of the other.

2187 hadn’t realized until now that he could also know things about  _ himself,  _ about his own mind--that those things counted as knowledge, that he could put the pieces of himself together like the pieces of a trade route or a circuit. That  _ time passed since reconditioning  _ meant  _ more connections.  _ That  _ pride in the Order  _ blotted out  _ questions  _ like a fog. That  _ fear  _ was different depending on what it was  _ fear of-- _ of discipline, of failure, of getting caught.

It was exhilarating, but he couldn’t share it, and that made it strange too. The barracks were full of secrets, but all those secrets were shared with at least one other trooper--that’s how you knew they were secrets. He couldn’t explain this to anyone. They’d think he was trying to make himself important--a reconditioning offense, since stormtroopers weren’t important--or going spare, which meant the suffocating dark of space. Or no, since they were on Starkiller now, they’d probably just shoot him.

He thought about sharing it with Slip, breath-quiet in the dark of barracks, or under the cover of the cleaning machine’s noises. Slip wouldn’t stool him out. But he wouldn’t understand. Kissing Slip’s throat at night, wanting to but holding back from leaving a mark that would show in the freshers or at a physical, tracing with his tongue the aching angle of Slip’s neck wholly given over to pleasure, 2187 felt--lost. At a loss. Alone.

The next day in group simulations, a hostile winged 2231 and 2187 went back and took him up. The joints of their armor froze in sims to mimic injuries, but 2231 was also not much help, struggling against the lift and saying, “What the fuck, that would be disabling, just leave me.”

“You wouldn’t say that if this was a real battle,” 2187 grunted, hauling at him grimly.

“Sure I would. Nobody wants to be a liability.”

Captain Phasma chewed him out for it, too, though she held back from giving him punishment detail. “A good trooper knows when to cut the Order’s losses,” she pointed out, mildly for her.

“Yes, Captain.”

“If this were a real battle, trying to save 2231 could jeopardize the objective.”

The objective in this simulation had been a bald hillock on a lavender-skied world, with a little glitch near the horizon. All the briefing had said was that it was “of strategic importance.” The briefing hadn’t included the nature of the importance or anything about the strategy. It hadn’t even included the overall objective of the offensive. “Defend,” it had said, and they had defended. When he stooped to get 2231’s arm over his shoulders, 2187 had looked back at the hillock. There was nothing on it to defend. “Yes, Captain,” he said to her burnished chestplate.

He didn’t really believe that 2231 would have offered to stay behind and die in a real battle, even for the good of the Order. But maybe he, 2187, was wrong--wrong about that, wrong about everything, broken somehow. Maybe that was why reconditioning messed him up so much.

2187 thought about this again when General Hux showed up for one of his periodic inspections. They stood in their ranks in the bright, sparkling sun of Starkiller ( _ What was this moon before it was Starkiller?)  _ that never got quite warm enough, at least at this latitude, to do anything but bounce and dazzle off their armor, turn the pauldrons and insignia of the higher ranks to drops of blood and silver. The General led them in the anthem, they raised their fists in salute and cheered in unison, but it was like there was a leak in the hull of 2187’s mind.  _ (Did it have a name? Did it have people?)  _ He shouted, he saluted, he was stirred, but he could  _ notice  _ he was stirred.

Later that day there was a live training exercise: now that they were onplanet, they could do more of those and fewer sims. FN-2187 didn’t like the forest. The way sound fell, dulled by the trees and their fallen needles underfoot, made him feel like there was something wrong with his ears. He was unsettled by the filtered light, the burnt-firestart lines of the tree trunks and the shifting pattern they made behind one another as the troopers fanned out. A sense of menace, of something  _ waiting  _ for him here, stalked behind him: once or twice he whirled, but there was no one there.  

“FN-2187,” Captain Phasma said as they filed onto the ground transport back to base, and inside his helmet he could feel the blood leaving his lips. Had she seen him reacting to nothing in particular? That was bad. Could be very bad. “I want to speak with you when we get back to base.”

Shit, shit, shit. The panic hammered at the inside of his helmet, setting up a din so that he didn’t even hear Vibro giving Slip a hard time until she’d already built up a head of steam: what had started as the kind of joking-not-joking that troopers often gave each other, ribbing him about not keeping up in a chase over rough terrain, had tipped into something nastier, the kind of thing you’d be more likely to hear from an officer.  “I don’t know why they don’t space you, you always slow us down.”

Normally 2187 would have spoken  up for him at this point, would say something like, “Unity, remember, 3405?” which was Vibro’s designation--they didn’t use squadnames in front of officers, even though officers had to know they used them--or, “Maybe you should work on your own reaction times before you shit on anybody else’s,” even though there was nothing wrong with Vibro’s reaction times. But he was already on a thin tether with the Captain--must be, if she was ordering a meeting--and he didn’t want to get in worse than he already was. So he said nothing, and imagined he could feel Slip’s confusion and reproach, even though he was standing--as they all were--at transport ease, waiting to be tipped out at their destination.

He stood at attention in the Captain’s niche--captains didn’t rate their own offices, those were for higher ranks. “FN-2187,” she said, her voice measured and echoing in chrome.

“Sir.”

“Tell me what was wrong with your performance in that exercise three cycles ago, trooper.”

His mind was shifting, falling, rustling so much with the feeling from the forest that it took him nearly forty seconds by the wall chrono to say, “I failed to execute the attack in a manner that would minimize casualties for our side, sir.”

Her armor masked her movements even more than trooper armor would, because of the way the joints worked, but he thought she might be surprised. “We’re at war, FN-2187,” she said. “Preventing casualties is positive when it’s possible, but it’s not our objective and if it impedes our objective--I’m sure a soldier as competent as you can take my point.”

Part of him, the armored part, glowed at that “competent”--the highest praise an officer ever gave a trooper. Another part of him, the part he didn’t understand, set his jaw inside the helmet: she was wrong. Those priorities were wrong, or at least were incomplete. And a third part, the part that watched over him, warned:  _ Act like she’s right. Say you understand. _

“Understood, sir,” FN-2187 said.

“I wonder if you do, 2187.” Sometimes officers said things like this, that sounded like they might have a further meaning but didn’t lead anywhere. 2187 liked things to lead somewhere, but he was a stormtrooper, so he stood at attention, waiting for his superior officer to release him. “The Order rewards competence,” the Captain was saying. “You could be officer material. But competence is nothing without compliance.” It almost sounded like the oath of allegiance, an item of doctrine; it gave him the feeling he’d heard it before, but he couldn’t remember where.

“And the Order can’t afford compliance without competence, either.” He had a feeling that that meant something besides what it sounded like, but while he was still trying to figure it out, she added, “So choose your loyalties wisely. Your squadmates, or the order. Dismissed, trooper.” She didn’t offer to give him a chit for his next rotation. The sani squad leader would probably put him on punishment detail for being late, and rightly so. It was his own fault for--

For what, exactly?

For being out of step. For needing to be warned, or--commended?--or whatever that was. Now it’s his  _ conditioned _ thoughts that are blurred, and the other thoughts that are clear....his own thoughts?

Troopers didn’t need to think. Eyes down, mind empty, trigger ready.

The sani squad leader sent him to the sewer levels, sure enough, where the bacterial cultures broke down human waste into combustion fuel, for flying in atmo, and dry, lifeless powder. The powder was odorless, but the process smelled worse than shit itself. 2187 and two other troopers tested and adjusted the proportions of bacteria to slurry in the tanks, and in between samples they flicked rueful information at each other.  _ Lingering,  _ signed GA-1447, naming their offense, and FN-2207 signed  _ Messed up a circuit.  _ They turned their attention to 2187’s hands, as was only polite.

You weren’t supposed to say that an officer made you late, although it happened all the time. What you did well belonged to the Order; your mistakes were yours alone.  _ Late on shift,  _ he signed, picturing the dazzle of Captain Phasma’s breastplate, hearing her clipped tones.

They got into a rhythm with the work, and FN-2187’s thoughts began to swirl and gather around that conversation in the officer’s niche. Loyalties. What loyalty did a stormtrooper have but to the First Order, who gave them everything--nourished their bodies, formed their minds, united them with a glorious purpose?

Slip. She was talking about Slip. “Compliance without competence.” Slip is competent, FN-2187’s mind corrected, or he would have been spaced long ago. But just at the edge of it, a little slow to react, a little clumsy. Not as valuable to the Order as, say, 2187 himself.

_ But he’s valuable to me,  _ 2187 thought, and knew as he thought it that it wasn’t a thought he’d ever had before. Not one he knew he  _ could  _ have.

His hands were steady on the the buttons of the assayer, steady on the sample skimmers, well-trained, automatic. But something in him was trembling.

That night in barracks, he was fierce with Slip in a way he’d almost never been, jerking him roughly, setting his teeth in the strap of muscle between the ball of Slip’s shoulder and the curve of his neck. Slip responded the way he always did, eager and earnest, fumbling the rhythm once or twice, hiding his sounds in 2187’s hair.

And the next day in maneuvers, when Slip was a little slow on a pivot, FN-2187 snapped, “Get it together, 03, you’re leaving her flank open.” Slip didn’t flinch--no trooper flinched at a reprimand even from another trooper, and the ones that did wouldn’t last long. But 2187 knew him, knew his reactions, could tell he was shaken. In the mess later, Slip ate steadily, eyes down, as they all did, but also didn’t bump his shoulder or his thigh against 2187’s like he normally would.

It’s better anyway, 2187 thought. We need to be careful.

Slip needs to be better, 2187 thought, he’s going to die if he doesn’t shape up, or get someone else killed.

And not quite a thought, but a feeling, of shame, familiar to him from failing in compliance, but not from something he--

FN-2187 breathed and thought. Tried to see it the way he saw the movements of convoys and troops and materiel, a series of patterns, connections. But it kept twisting in his gut, making him want to pivot, turn away, retreat. From himself?

He only recently learned that he could have thoughts, feelings, intentions, that he could be sure were his--not chosen for him. It hadn’t occurred to him that he still might not be able to fully understand them, or control them. That when he acted on them, he wouldn’t be able to tell whether he was doing right or wrong.

 


	5. Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An order FN-2187 had never received before: shoot on sight, and shoot to kill.

When the orders came in through the helmet, he was clearing a clog in the Level 4 vents with a trooper named Outside, called that because an engineer once took her with him to repair something on the hull turret of a star destroyer. She never talked about it, but that and her advanced age--she was in Year Twenty-Four of service--made her something of a hero in the barracks.

She was in the FN series too, so she stepped after him through the threshold autoclave and into the lift. They picked up six more FN troopers as they went, turning to face the door according to protocol, not speaking or signing. Their orders were to go to the smaller practice ground--not the parade ground--and stand in formation, so that’s what they did, facing the podium where whoever they were here to listen to would stand.

There was a sudden feeling like the forest was closing in around him, though the practice ground was clear-cut for meters in all directions. And Kylo Ren rose behind the podium.

Discipline held. No trooper moved a muscle. But the rumors were surely echoing behind every helmet. Kylo Ren put his lightsaber through a trooper for disobeying an order. For  _ obeying  _ an order. Kylo Ren can make you do anything he wants. He can make General  _ Hux  _ do anything he wants. Kylo Ren is a xeno, Kylo Ren is disfigured, Kylo Ren is a traitor from the Republic, Kylo Ren is a droid or a cyborg. The voice sounded metallic enough. No trooper ever claimed to have seen him without his helmet.

His lightsaber was extinguished, but to FN-2187’s eye the air still crackled around him.

He didn’t say anything about what they were to do on the mission, of course. Captain Phasma would do that, just before they were to embark.. He said a few things in that distorted voice about retrieving something priceless from an ancient enemy of all the First Order stands for, and then he sank back down, out of sight, as the platform below his feet lowered under him and carried him into a part of the base that 2187 could never identify.

Captain Phasma briefed them further: desert planet, sand underfoot, village, hostile natives, night conditions. And an order 2187 had never received before: shoot on sight, and shoot to kill.

They filed onto the transport, which would take them up to a ship with lightspeed capability _ ,  _ in orbit now around Starkiller. FN-2187 had heard of the  _ Finalizer,  _ flagship of the fleet, General Hux’s own. He wondered--even now, his mind refused to stop wondering--if this was it, as the transport settled into place, as the acceleration began.

He didn’t know where Slip was, had lost sight of him when they were boarding. He was somewhere in the rows of armored bodies. 2187 ached to peel his glove back at the wrist again, press his own fingers there. He didn’t dare.

If they were shooting to kill, so, probably, would the enemy. He might never see Slip again.

He’d always known that he could die at any time for the First Order, which in its wisdom gave him his life and in its wisdom could demand it back. It was what every trooper knew. When you know something, you don’t think about it. (But he remembered thinking about this, before.)

Either we’re valuable or we’re not, FN-2817 thought. Either we’re an investment, something the First Order doesn’t want to waste, or we’re disposable. Which is it? How can we be both?

If Slip could be more valuable--that wasn’t the right word, but 2187 couldn’t think of another, even though he knew there must  _ be  _ another, somewhere, in some language--than First Order principles to  _ him,  _ to 2187, then other troopers could be more valuable to  _ other  _ troopers. Just like that, he flashed on another piece of it: 2246, tear-blotched, ferocity cutting through the dullness of her voice when she spoke about Sixes. Saying  _ I want to feel like this.  _ And vanishing.

And if troopers could be whatever-it-is-instead-of-valuable to other troopers, then--

There was something there, something hovering just on the horizon of his mind, like the sun coming over a planetary curve. An image he’d seen only in holos, accompanied by swelling music, to symbolize the dawning of the First Order’s bright new day over a benighted world. When troopers were in space, they were in the transport holds, well away from viewports.

A cessation of motion, and a lurch, and the muffled sound of propulsion, and the beginning of a different kind of motion, the transport itself, rolling through the airlock and heaving up--in the wake of Kylo Ren’s  _ Silencer,  _ probably. The stormtroopers’ sway in place adjusted to the acceleration, to the slight shift in gravity that entering the atmosphere brings. They’d done this part a thousand times, in sims, in space.

The transport landed, impact numbed through all those layers of metal and trapped air. The pressure vents hissed. 2187 looked straight ahead of him and waited for the hatch to open.


End file.
